Fraser Applies Own Past In 'School Ties'

NAMES & FACES

September 24, 1992|By Los Angeles Daily News

LOS ANGELES — Brendan Fraser's performance in the new movie School Ties as the first Jewish student in a WASP prep school, circa 1955, can be summarized in one equation. The first part is Fraser's hatred of anti-Semitism.

The other part comes from Fraser's own background, which includes repeated instances of being the new kid in class and an early education in the Holocaust.

The son of a Canadian tourism official, Fraser, 23, moved around Europe before settling as a teen-ager in Toronto. ''I grew up in many places, so it was a constant process of re-emerging,'' he said.

''Making this movie caused me to reflect on the countless number of times that I've done that.''

In School Ties, which opened last weekend, Fraser plays David Greene, a football star from a working-class family who tries to hide his Jewish heritage.

To Fraser, the depth of anti-Semitism that School Ties depicts was no great revelation.

''As a kid, when I lived in Holland, my parents took me to Anne Frank's house,'' he recalled. A museum occupies the site where the Jewish girl wrote a diary that became a testament to the inhumanity of the Nazi Holocaust. ''On the first floor, there were photographs depicting war atrocities. Seeing these photos as a child terrified me - 6 million people exterminated because they were Jewish.''